Life Imprisonment

* John DiPaola, 21, of Catonsville, owner of DiPaola's Baskets and Flowers:In my opinion, it should carry a minimum of 15-year sentence. If someone's murdered, I think it should be life. If someone's life is ,, taken, it's only fair that that person's life be taken. Life imprisonment or death.

With this abortion doctor from the Philadelphia area having been found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment for killing babies or letting them die through lack of care and sustenance ("Doctor given 2 life terms in abortion case," May 15) - all in clear violation of his Hippocratic oath to preserve life by all available means and methods - I got to thinking about some questions I'd like to ask. How many more abortionists like Kermit Gosnell are out there doing basically the same thing?

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court handed death-penalty opponents an important but limited victory yesterday, reaffirming that defendants in certain cases are entitled to tell jurors that they will not be eligible for parole if sentenced to life in prison instead of to death. In a 7-2 decision, the court ruled that when a jury must choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment for someone who prosecutors say poses a threat to society, the defendant may point out that he could never be freed from prison.

A member of an alleged international marijuana smuggling organization shipping drugs to Maryland has pleaded guilty to kidnapping a man who was later murdered in the bathroom of a White Marsh apartment. Jamaican national Dean Myrie, 39, faces life imprisonment for his role in the crime and for being a member of the organization. Myrie and other members of the ring kidnapped Michael Knight, a courier, in December, 2009, federal prosecutors said. They thought he had stolen $250,000 in money he had been holding for Brown, according to filings in the case, bound him up with a telephone cord and interrogated him. When Knight said he did not know where the money went, prosecutors say a woman named Jean Brown - who allegedly led the organization - paid two other men $100,000 to kill him. She denies the allegations.

Christopher Dreisbach is right that if abortion at any stage is murder, then it's difficult to oppose Rep. Todd Akin's claim that an aborted fetus resulting from rape is an innocent victim ("Abortion ethics not so simple," Aug. 28). But it is equally difficult for Mr. Akin and others who claim to believe that abortion is murder to explain why abortionists, and their accomplices and co-conspirators, should not be subject to the penalties we apply in the case of other premeditated murders.

By Compiled from the archives of the Historical Society of Carroll County | July 16, 1995

25 Years Ago* What, after all, happens to the hijackers who have been taking over planes at gunpoint and diverting them to Cuba? This is a question which has been perplexing thousands of outraged Americans who resent this threat to their travel safety in the skies. Now we know what has happened to at least one of them. . . . U.S. District Court Judge Albert Henderson, sitting on the federal bench at Newman, Ga., has sentenced convictedhijacker Lorenzo Edward Ervin, Jr., of Chattanooga, Tenn.

A Silver Spring man pleaded for the death penalty but was given life imprisonment yesterday for kidnapping two western Howard County women and raping them in his home while videotaping the 1992 attacks.William Kirk Evans, a 52-year-old computer analyst who has four children and was married at the time of the incidents, was given the sentence in Howard Circuit Court after he begged his victims and his family for forgiveness.Evans, who pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree rape in January, was sentenced by Judge Raymond Kane Jr. He is to be sentenced in Montgomery County next month as part of another plea agreement involving two similar attacks in 1990.

When the commission on capital punishment in Maryland, headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ben Civiletti, issued its final report last year, it concluded that the death penalty was not a cost-effective tool in the cause of public safety — in short, it was a waste of taxpayer money. The commission looked at the costs for prosecutors and public defenders at trials and for the litigation of appeals over a 30-year period and found them "substantially higher" than those for cases in which the maximum sentence was life imprisonment.

In a self-proclaimed fight for his innocence, Abras S. Q. "Sandy" Morrison asked a three-judge panel in Carroll County to remove the term "without parole" from his life sentence for first-degree murder."

IF THE CRIMES for which Timothy McVeigh has been convicted show the depths to which some humans can stoop, the death penalty for which he is eligible illustrates how the urge for vengeance can overshadow the demands of conscience.It is true the deliberate destruction of a federal office building and the deaths of 168 people rank high on the scale of heinous crimes; many Americans have been executed for lesser offenses. It is also true that no matter how strong the desire to wreak upon this man the ultimate revenge, the death penalty will fall short of satisfying that urge.

Christopher Dreisbach is right that if abortion at any stage is murder, then it's difficult to oppose Rep. Todd Akin's claim that an aborted fetus resulting from rape is an innocent victim ("Abortion ethics not so simple," Aug. 28). But it is equally difficult for Mr. Akin and others who claim to believe that abortion is murder to explain why abortionists, and their accomplices and co-conspirators, should not be subject to the penalties we apply in the case of other premeditated murders.

A Rosedale man was sentenced Monday to life imprisonment for arranging a meeting between his aunt and the man she hired to kill her husband. Seamus Anthony Coyle, who turned 30 last week, was sentenced by Baltimore County Circuit Judge Thomas Bollinger for connecting Karla Porter with Walter Bishop, whom Porter hired to kill her husband, according to the Baltimore County state's attorney's office. Porter's husband, William "Ray" Porter, was shot to death by Bishop at the Hess gas station on Joppa Road in Towson on March 1, 2010.

What can one say in the argument over capital punishment that hasn't been said before? Perhaps only that the case is not one-sided and that both supporters and opponents typically play fast and loose with the evidence. Let us dispense, for now, with the unrepresentative horror stories of vile killers who were never executed or sympathetic defendants convicted with insufficient evidence. I generally support the state's seriously considering taking the life of those convicted of committing first-degree murder or worse.

When the commission on capital punishment in Maryland, headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ben Civiletti, issued its final report last year, it concluded that the death penalty was not a cost-effective tool in the cause of public safety — in short, it was a waste of taxpayer money. The commission looked at the costs for prosecutors and public defenders at trials and for the litigation of appeals over a 30-year period and found them "substantially higher" than those for cases in which the maximum sentence was life imprisonment.

An Anne Arundel County judge found a Baltimore man guilty Friday of the rape and robbery of a 62-year-old woman who was attacked as she was ending her workday at a Brooklyn Park laundromat. Christopher Parr, 30, of the 4000 block of Barrington Road, had entered an insanity plea, claiming that he was not able to control his behavior in the July 19, 2006, assault at the Village Laundromat at 617 Church St. However, prosecutors said he understood exactly what he was doing when he entered the laundromat through the back door at 9:45 p.m. as the woman was locking up. In the laundromat, he tried to strangle her, raped her, demanded cash and complained that she had coins, and then stole her car. He then went home and put his hands on his mother's throat, according to police.

Fallible government must end executions As a Goldwater conservative, there is very little that I agree with Gov. Martin O'Malley about. However, I commend him for his avid opposition to capital punishment ("Behind the debate," Nov. 16). There is an unavoidable paradox at the core of capital punishment. The government is supposed to act on behalf of the citizens of the state. Therefore, if the state executes even one innocent person, then all of the citizens of the state become murderers who deserve to be prosecuted.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Eduardo Agbayani never knew how close he had come to a reprieve when he was executed for rape in the Philippines last year, or how much his final moments had become a comedy of errors. Agbayani, one of hundreds of men and women on death row after the Philippines reinstated capital punishment in 1994, had been sentenced by one of the country's enthusiastic hanging judges who called themselves the Guillotine Club. More than 1,500 people have received death sentences in the Philippines in the last seven years, with more than 30 people sentenced to die in some months.

An Anne Arundel County judge found a Baltimore man guilty Friday of the rape and robbery of a 62-year-old woman who was attacked as she was ending her workday at a Brooklyn Park laundromat. Christopher Parr, 30, of the 4000 block of Barrington Road, had entered an insanity plea, claiming that he was not able to control his behavior in the July 19, 2006, assault at the Village Laundromat at 617 Church St. However, prosecutors said he understood exactly what he was doing when he entered the laundromat through the back door at 9:45 p.m. as the woman was locking up. In the laundromat, he tried to strangle her, raped her, demanded cash and complained that she had coins, and then stole her car. He then went home and put his hands on his mother's throat, according to police.

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Amid days of secret Pentagon proceedings against those suspected of being al-Qaida terrorists, the U.S. military is reopening its war-crimes court today with a single charge against an alleged war-on-terror foot soldier with no explicit links to the Sept. 11 attacks. Australian David Hicks, 31, is slated this afternoon to become the first Guantanamo captive to appear before a newly constituted Military Commission. In a nine-page charge sheet, he is accused of providing material support for terrorism.

By Borzou Daragahi and Borzou Daragahi,LOS ANGELES TIMES | November 7, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader convicted of crimes against humanity, could face the hangman in four or five months inside the notorious Abu Ghraib prison where he sent many of his victims, the lead prosecutor in his case and a top Iraqi legal expert said yesterday. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi, who dueled with Hussein during 11 months of grueling courtroom confrontations, estimated that the Iraqi High Tribunal's nine-judge appellate panel would complete its review in about two months.